The invention is directed to a system and method of measuring electric field strength of radio waves arriving at an arbitrary point. In particular, to a system and method of measuring and collecting electric field strength data of radio waves at an arbitrary point, which are transmitted from cell stations (CSs) of a personal handy phone system (PHS) is described.
In recent years, personal handy phone systems that improve the functionality of a digital cordless telephone system to extend its applicable area to be usable even outdoors have been put to practical use.
In the PHS, cell stations must be installed on public telephone boxes, poles, roofs of buildings, and so on, such that PHS terminals or personal stations (PSs) can be used as a simple portable telephone outdoors. In addition, such cell stations must be installed on ceilings and in underground streets to allow use of personal stations even in an underground environment. The installation of these cell station enables the personal stations to be used in radio zones, of associated cell stations, thus allowing continuous communication.
A radio zone covered by a cell station, i.e., a micro cell zone has a radius of, for example, approximately 300 meters. It is well known, however, that a range in which a call can be initiated and received is generally limited by insensitive zones due to obstructions such as buildings, and thus all micro cell zones do not generally have a uniform radius. Also, a cell station is generally allocated a limited number of channels, for example, four, so that a multiplicity of cell stations must be installed in highly frequently accessed areas such as downtown, where many PHS terminals may be used simultaneously. By doing this, the number of available channels is increased and thereby communications can be made with the PHS terminals through the channels.
In installing cell stations, detecting coverage of each cell station to reveal the state of a service area for the PHS is necessary. Conventionally, to reveal the state of a service area, an operator manually marks each measuring point on a map, writes measured electric field strength values of signals received at the measuring point, near the marked point, and analyzes the measured values to reveal the state of a service area. Consequently, the conventional measuring method entails extremely low working efficiency.